We still have a telly. It sits in the corner over there. Once or twice a week, we might find where the remote control went and fire the gogglebox up to catch some news. Otherwise, it spends most of its life wasting milliwatts on standby.
That said, I do use it to watch DVDs. I’ve only got a small collection, various films, some TV series box sets, that sort of thing. If I feel in the mood, I’ll take a disc from the shelf and turn the lights down and volume up, and wallow in some escapism for an hour or two.
As a bit of a Star Trek groupie — I know, there’s a proper term for it. Do I care? — I’ve got the box sets of all the TV shows. In 2023 I began re-re-rewatching The Next Generation, then paused for a bit while life threw some spanners about. This autumn past, I picked up where I’d left off, somewhere in season five, and carried on until a few weeks ago. My personal take is seasons four through seven are TNG at its best. Perhaps controversially I think stories got meatier and better after the death of Gene Roddenberry, ST’s creator. Anyway, having finished tagging along with Enterprise D and her crew, I will embark on a rewatch of ST:Deep Space Nine early next year.
Other stuff I’ve watched has almost exclusively been via YouTube. As a bit of a petrolhead, I subscribe to various channels that are dedicated to oldish cars, other vehicles, and transport history.
Hubnut — celebrating the ordinary, with poor quality tinkering and lots of test drives.
I Drive A Classic — a weekly show that takes us for a drive in all kinds of classic motors.
Auto Shenanigans — road trips, exploring mundanities of motorways, and a bit difficult to describe easily.
Up’n’Down — a mechanic’s eye view of motoring, with occasional test drives, tinkering, spannering, and a dynamometer. He also owns a Citroën SM.
Twin Cam — well-researched reviews of classic cars and other motoring related information.
Whiteland Restorations — a family-run car restoration company, showing excellent skills.
Miller Corner — a bit difficult to describe. Watch one and see what you think.
Cambrian Classics — another quality and skilled mechanic working on classic cars.
Classics World TV — a weekly classic car newspaper, now branching out into videos.
No Expense Spent Studios — an artist who likes to draw cars, but also tries to maintain a small fleet of classic motors.
Bus Grease Monkey — weirdly fascinating channel about a man who repairs American classic buses and coaches, among other things.
Then there are channels that are just interesting, be they about canal life, naval history, Australians just having fun, or snippets from the BBC’s television archives.
Cruising The Cut — canals and messing about in boats.
Vandemonium — life in a converted van.
WW2TV — discussion format, with historians and experts on various topics around World War 2.
Drachinifel — naval history and technology from essentially the pre-Roman period to the end of World War 2.
Paul Whitewick — lots of on-the-ground enthusiastic discovery of historical subjects.
Joolz Guides — guided tours around areas of London, filled with fascinating things.
The SloMo Guys — take an expensive slow-motion capture device and make fascinating videos of things exploding.
How Ridiculous — three Australians having lots of fun, exploding and smashing things.
Adam Savage’s Tested — a wide variety of stuff about making, makers, art, films, models, you name it.
Tested Team — a new-ish channel sprouted by the team behind the Tested channel.
Mythbusters — someone got the rights to the well-regarded TV show, and full-length unedited episodes are uploaded here.
Tech Moan — exploring old and new tech, mostly old, some very old.
BBC Archive — BBC television has stuff archived back to the 1950s, and it’s fascinating.
The list is long, and reasonably varied. I almost forgot, there’s also the original Channel Four Time Team series as well as a new fan-funded reinvigorated Time Team with all new digs.
You can sort of see why the poor old gogglebox has pretty much been left alone in the corner for much of the past two or three years!